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Z Magazine is an independent monthly magazine founded in 1988. Our mission is to publish in depth articles that critique society's political, economic, social life and institutions. We see the race, class, and gender dimensions of personal life as equally important in understanding current circumstances and as necessary for developing visions and strategies for progressive change.

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More than 800 migrants died on April 19 this year when their overcrowded boat capsized in the Mediterranean Sea off the Libyan coast. The tragedy sent soaring this year’s Mediterranean death toll which was by then around 1,500

Getting cars off the roads would help combat climate change and improve air quality. Government policy could make this happen. From Acela to Alaska, U.S. train travel offers a practical, affordable, and green alternative to travel by car and plane.

If you were airdropped blindfolded into a strange town and given nothing but a bus ticket, to where would you ride that bus? You might be surprised to learn that there’s only one good answer, and that’s the public library

For several decades, state and local governments have been showering private businesses with tax breaks and direct subsidies based on the theory that this practice fosters economic development and, therefore, job growth. But does it?

Despite the nearly 24-hour-a-day national television coverage of the situation in Baltimore, there was much the media didn’t cover. Some of these omissions, or facts only mentioned once and never repeated, appeared against the media owners’ more right-wing political agenda.

From 1991 through 2001, a series of conflicts, including the Bosnian War, were fought on the territory of the Former Yugoslavia. During that time, ethnic, sexual and economic violence against women was rampant and rape was used as a tool for “ethnic cleansing.”

In a world where six of the world’s nine nuclear-armed states are already directly or indirectly engaged in armed conflict, even the best case scenario is a disaster. The nuclear-armed U.S. and Russia are facing off over Ukraine. The nuclear-armed U.S., UK, France, and Israel are supporting Saudi Arabia’s war on Yemen, with nuclear-armed Pakistan weighing its options.

On May 21, 2015, the Colombian Air Force (FAC) bombed the base camp of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) killing 26 guerrillas. Three days later, FAC bombed other FARC bases killing 14 more guerrillas.

Authors Pascale and Cook write in “U.S. Language Policy”: “According to the U.S Census, in three decades, no single racial or ethnic group will comprise the majority of the U.S. population. In many parts of the U.S. this reality has already arrived…. “The United States prides itself on being ‘a nation of immigrants,’ yet it has cultivated a multicultural, monolingual society.”

What can lobbyists do when science contradicts their political messages? Some simply deny the science, as many conservatives do with climate change. Others pretend to embrace the science, while ignoring or purging the disagreeable content. That’s what the Breakthrough Institute (BTI) is doing with one of the most widely discussed issues in 21st century science, Read more…

Propaganda shapes the flow of information in many different ways, including, obviously, the choice of the news fit to print, its placement, and the selection of authorities to make those facts credible. But equally important… is omitting facts and ignoring sources that call the chosen (often official) perspective into question.

The American government’s (federal, state and local) race to incarcerate black and Latino communities exists within the struggle between capital and labor. The former has triumphed over the latter in the past 40 years through deindustrialization, deregulation and privatization

After the September 11 terrorist attacks, the Philippines joined the U.S. in the global War on Terror. The effort became a subterfuge for the Philippine government to wage its own Argentina-style dirty war against political opponents.

Two years after Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker signed a controversial Iron Mining Law designed to speed up permitting for a giant open pit iron mine in the Penokee Hills above Lake Superior, Gogebic Taconite (GTac), president Bill Williams pulled the plug on the mine because the project was not feasible

Over those 41 years, Allen, Professor of Philosophy, has been the one MPAC constant. His work illustrates how someone can devote their life-long distance running—to building a better world. He’s also a long-distance runner

In 1925, 18 Baltimore neighborhood associations came together to form the “Allied Civic and Protective Association” for the purpose of urging both new and existing property owners to sign restrictive covenants, which committed owners never to sell to an African American

“There are more than 10,000 abandoned uranium mines in Western states and many are in or near indigenous communities suffering from high cancer rates, kidney failure, and birth defects caused by exposure to these toxic sites”

In a few months, North Carolina’s $10 million private school voucher program could quadruple in size, according to Wake County GOP Representative Paul Stam, Speaker Pro Tempore of the Republican-led state House.

One of the few bright spots for many prisoners has been the face-to-face family visit. Now, along comes something called video visitation, the latest profit-making venture trying to suck money out of the pockets of prisoners and their families

For more than half a century, the United Nations has been the main forum for the United States to try to create a world in its image, maneuvering with its allies to forge global accords about human rights, nuclear tests or the environment that Washington insisted would mirror its own values.”

In the U.S. establishment’s patriotic history of the Ukraine conflict it is also important to black out the fact that the United States, so passionately opposed to Russian “aggression,” committed a vastly more deadly one in Iraq from 2003.

In recent months, “Progressive Democrats” have been hoping to breathe new life into the nation’s hopelessly 1%-dominated “two party system” by running the nominally socialist, technically Independent, and genuinely populist and domestically progressive U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT)

By the time I leave Kentucky’s federal prison center, where I’m an inmate with a 3 month sentence, the world’s 12th largest city may be without water. Estimates put the water reserve of Sao Paulo, a city of 20 million people, at 60 days

In the U.S., those in charge of the Empire don’t fret over the deaths of Iraqi children. Hell, they don’t shed a tear for poor or dying U.S. children, so why should we expect the managers of Empire to offer any mercy to the enemy?

Since 2011, the arrogant and ineffective mayor Rahm Emanuel, catered to his rich folks base (with “the actions of a mad king”). And he has treated the majority of Chicagoans with destructive disdain, whether he’s closing their schools, attacking teachers and other public employees, or ignoring police brutality and killing.

The environmental devastation from past and ongoing gold mining operations in El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras has provoked a formidable Salvadoran social movement that has been educating and organizing communities for a total ban against metallic mining in El Salvador.

On February 11, 2015, the government of President Nicolas Maduro, along with a number of his senior officials, declared that Venezuela had faced an attempted coup. Contrarily, the mainstream media in the United States and in Europe viewed such allegations as ridiculous

Among the important subcategories of bottom-up history are stories of the local chapters of important radical and revolutionary organizations whose national work has previously been the primary focus of scholarship and attention